Stolen Secrets
by Arachne1
Summary: Rogue's reflections on the X-Men's Fearless Leader. Rating for subject matter.


Stolen Secrets  
  
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Author's notes: I don't own nobody. So you don't get to sue. This is Evolution-verse, but I have added some elements from the comics to it.  
  
Archiving: just drop me a line so I know where my stories are and so I can add you to my links on my website.  
  
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Ah know who you really are.  
You stand there, so proud in your uniform, showin' some of the new girls the controls in the Danger Room. You just smile and shake your head as they blantly try to flirt with you. And Ah know why you never flirt back. You don't want them to get to close.  
Kurt and Evan have taken to callin' you "fearless leader." You always just roll your eyes behind your shades and say the Professor is really the "leader". Ah now know why you put all your faith in that man.  
Ah know you better than anyone here and you don't even know it. You don't know how Ah wake up every night from nightmares of bein' burnt alive. Layin' in bed, Ah can still feel chubby little boy fingers clunchin' me so hard, cause if he - or Ah - let go... he's dead. Ah touch my face to find dried tears, because Mommy and Daddy - your Mommy and Daddy- are dead.  
Ah thought Ah was the tough one here. Ah was supposed to be the street smart runaway. But Ah had Mystique to tuck me in at night. Ah had Irene to put a band aid on me if Ah hurt myself. They kept me safe. You had no one. Your only livin' relative, the little brother that you had saved was taken from you when you were in a hospital bed. Ah get flashes of that sometimes. No one paid much attention to the orphan with the brain damage...You had no one to tuck you in at night at the orphanage. But why...why in god's name did you leave there? It was lonely, but you were safe from the outside.  
Memories are stolen each time Ah touch someone. Last time Ah touched you Mystique was tryin' to murder you. How could someone who had taught me to read, bought me my first train' bra, made me chicken soup when Ah had a cold cause she knows it will make me feel better- how could she try to kill someone? You were goin' to die on the side of that mountain if Ah didn't do something. So Ah touched you and attacked my momma with your own power. But your power wasn't the only thing Ah took.  
  
  
Ah know your secret.  
You ran away from the orphanage. And three nights later, your eyes blew up that dumpster you were hidin' behind. And that's when Diamond Jack found you. Why didn't you run as fast as you could away from him. Why did you trust him? Why?  
Because he told you he could help you. He told you he could fix everythin'. And then he gave you your sight back with a pair of ruby quartz glasses. The price....he made you one of "his boys", a part of his stable. You were only thirteen.  
I black those memories out. They are too painful...too personal.  
  
Finally you ran away from him. So battered, abused, and broken- but you managed to run away. That's when the Professor first found you with Cerebro. It was a race between Xavier and Diamond Jack to find you. And the Professor lost. When he found you, Jack had you up against a wall in a dirty alley. And you did the only thing you could to survive.  
You blasted the hell out of him.  
The professor told you he could help- and thank god you believed him. Xavier made sure the police could never connect you to Jack. Then he took you into his home. Made you his first student. The first X-Man. The first of all of us.  
You never talk about your life before Xavier, not even when Alex was visitin'. You think if no one knows, it will just go away, like a bad dream. So you wear your sweaters and pressed pants, and drive a sports car. You run for class president. You take charge as "fearless leader", tryin' to do anythin' you can to be a normal middle-class guy. To hide the fact you're a scared little boy. Ah know that you wake up covered in sweat from fear, from the same dream Ah do. Ah know that you flinch when any of the guys touch you. Ah know you won't ask Jean out because what if she found out? She would never want to be with a person like you. Or so you tell yourself.  
You need someone to hold you and tell you it's all right, that the bogeyman can't get you. You need someone to touch you in all the right ways that Ah could never do for you. So that it. No more teasing. No more flirtin'. No more games. As much as it tares me up inside, Ah can't keep you from the peace you need so much. Ah love you too much to do that to you.  
  
  
~fin~ 


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